Andy Murray texted job offer to new coach

Andy Murray has revealed he offered his new coach Amélie Mauresmo the job by text.

The Scot also said that he found it hard to get over losing her predecessor, Ivan Lendl, because “he was a huge part of my career.”

And the fact that his new coach is a woman “really wasn’t something I considered much once the decision was made.”

“My partnership with Amelie Mauresmo began with a text message: ‘I’m looking for a coach at the moment. If you’re interested in chatting to me, let me know,” Murray wrote on his BBC column from Queen’s where he is playing.

“I don’t know if she was surprised to hear from me, but she did make me wait overnight before messaging me back the next morning. A month or so later, here we are at Queen’s Club, and off to a winning start on the grass.

“We spoke a couple of times on the phone before the French Open and then I met her at a hotel when I got to Paris, somewhere quiet. I might have been a bit nervous but I knew what I wanted to speak about, and after five minutes we were talking about tennis and what I was looking for.

“It was good, I liked talking to her. She’s very calm and a good listener. She had a think about it for a couple of days and then said she was up for doing it.

“When I was speaking to her originally, and we were discussing the number of weeks I want her to be around, she said: ‘When you do need to have an answer by?’

“I wanted someone in place before Wimbledon and didn’t want to have to start the process again, so suggested we try it for a couple of weeks over the grass, see how it goes, and then we have a few weeks after Wimbledon to decide whether we want to go on or not.

“There’s a bit less pressure that way than her having to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a full-time role. You never know, she could have said ‘yes’ to the job permanently, only to find after a week of working together that we hated it!

“At the same time, she could have said ‘no’ and three weeks later end up regretting it. A trial period just seemed like the right thing to do.

“Hopefully it will work out well. The fact that she’s a woman really wasn’t something I considered much once the decision was made. I’ve brought in Amelie because I feel like I need something extra. I’ve won Grand Slam titles now and that’s the level I want to get back to.

“In a lot of ways it’s been a tough year for me since I last played on grass. Getting over the back surgery I had in September was a hard process. In the Slams I played decent, a couple of quarters and then the semis at the French, which was a pretty good effort despite the result at the end.

“It took a good three or four months after the surgery before I felt strong enough to play some longer matches, and even at the French I struggled a little bit physically.

“From time to time I still feel the back but in comparison to what it was like during the clay-court season last year, it’s so much better. I used to be struggling when I woke up in the morning, whereas now I wake up and don’t have any problems. It was affecting almost everything I did before, and now that’s not the case.

“The split with Ivan was also hard to get over for a little while because he was a huge part of my career. He had a big influence on me and my team.

“He was the leader, because of all the things he achieved and the results we had together. That gives you more influence. If things are going horribly it’s a bit different, but things had gone very well. It was tough for me, for sure, for a few weeks, but once I started thinking about different coaches, I started to move on and look for something different.

“It’s very early days with Amelie and part of the job is making her feel comfortable around me and the rest of the team.

“I remember seeing her play football in Indian Wells a few years ago and she looked pretty good. Maybe we’ll test out her skills. The football-tennis game we use in practice is probably quite a good way to get her involved, quite a lot of banter flies around during those games.

“Just spending time around her at the tournament, being on court, that kind of thing takes a bit of time, but it was great to have her on the team on Wednesday. And most important of all, we started with a win.”

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

The Scotsman provides news, events and sport features from the Edinburgh area. For the best up to date information relating to Edinburgh and the surrounding areas visit us at The Scotsman regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website The Scotsman requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.